Redemption (Amos Decker #5)(13)

“I worked here on the police force for twenty years.”

“Oh, well, I don’t have much contact with the police. I pay my taxes and I’ve never robbed anybody.”

“I’m sure,” said Jamison. “We were wondering if you could tell us when you last saw Ms. Richards.”

“Well, I saw her this morning when the police came to get her. We don’t usually have the police around here.”

“That was pretty early,” noted Jamison.

“Well, I get up pretty early. Only sleep maybe four hours a night. You get old, you don’t sleep. I’ll be sleeping all the time pretty soon.”

“Excuse me?” said Jamison.

“When I die, honey. I’m ninety-three, how much longer do you expect me to be around?” She paused and adjusted her glasses. “So why did the police take her in the first place?”

“For some questions. Did you see her yesterday, in the evening, maybe?”

“I saw her come home. It was around quarter past eight.”

“How can you be so certain?” asked Decker. “And have you spoken to her this morning?”

“No, I haven’t talked to her. If she’s home now she hasn’t come out of her house, least that I saw. Usually takes a walk in the morning. I have my coffee on the screen porch. I wave, she waves back. I guess the police coming messed that up.”

“So you didn’t see her come back from the police station this morning?” asked Decker.

“No. I was probably in the kitchen making breakfast, or out in the backyard puttering. I like to putter. People my age, we putter, and we do it slow. I don’t need a broken hip.”

“So last night?” prompted Jamison.

“Quarter past eight,” she said again, staring at Decker. “She volunteers at the homeless shelter. She always gets in around that time. And I know the time because Jeopardy! had been over about fifteen minutes. I got the Final Jeopardy question. The answer was Harry Truman. I remember Truman. Hell, I voted for him. All three of the contestants got it wrong. Not a single one was over thirty. What do they know about Harry Truman? I would have won enough to take a vacation somewhere.”

“So, you saw her come home last night? Did she leave again? Would you have seen her if she did?”

“She didn’t drive in her car if she did,” said Bates. “That car of hers sounds like a bomb going off when she starts it up. It’s an old Honda. Darn muffler’s shot. Told her to get it fixed. Almost makes me wet my pants every time I hear it. My hearing’s still good. I can hear pretty much everything and especially that damn car.”

“But she could have left another way. Walked or called a cab?”

“Well, I was out on the screen porch doing the crosswords and reading until about ten-thirty or so. I would have seen her leave. After that, I went inside. Hit the hay about eleven or so.”

“Okay, to be clear, at least until ten-thirty or so she hadn’t left her house?” said Decker. “And you never heard the car start up, at least until you went to bed around eleven?”

“I thought I just said that. Are you slow?”

“That’s great,” said Jamison quickly. “Mrs. Bates, you’ve been very helpful.”

“Okay, glad to do my civic duty.” She jerked her thumb at Decker and said in a low voice to Jamison, “I think the FBI needs better consultants. But you keep doing what you’re doing, honey. Nice to see a gal agent.”

“Thanks,” said Jamison, trying hard to suppress a smile.

They left Bates and headed back to the street.

Decker said, “If Richards walked, she could have gotten to the Residence Inn in time to kill Hawkins. And she clearly could have if she took a cab.”

“If she took a cab, we’ll be able to find any record of it. I suppose they don’t have Uber here?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

They tried the other two homes, but no one answered their knocks.

“Bottom line is we haven’t eliminated Richards as a suspect for Hawkins’s murder,” noted Decker.

“But do you really think she might have done it?”

“She has the most direct motive, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way. How she would know he was back in town being foremost among them.”

“You don’t think he would have gone to see her?”

“How would Hawkins even know where she lived? Lancaster didn’t tell him, I know that. And if he was innocent of the murders he wouldn’t have gone there to apologize.”

“You can Google someone’s address easily enough,” said Jamison.

“He just got out of prison and was terminally ill. I’m not sure I see the guy walking around with a computer and an Internet connection. Or finding one all that easily.”

“But he might have gone to get some info from her, especially if he thought she did it.”

Decker shook his head. “No, Hawkins knew from the trial that she had a firm alibi.” He paused and added thoughtfully, “Theoretically, she could have hired someone to do it for her, though there was absolutely no evidence of that. But we still arrive back at the problem with motive. With her husband around, she could stay home and raise the kids. She never got remarried, there was no boyfriend waiting in the wings. She didn’t get rich off her family’s murders. I just don’t see it. And no way she was going to kill her own kids.”